Quartz

This article has been republished, with permission, from GarciaMedia.com. To see more articles like this, check out their blog.

A recent visit to the Quartz newsroom in New York City proves the point: here is a shop where a story first philosophy pays great dividends—and for advertising, too.

First, a disclaimer: We are true fans of everything that Quartz, Atlantic Media’s business news site, does.

This has been enhanced by a recent visit that I paid to the Quartz newsroom in New York City, and the grand personal tour that our art director Reed Reibstein and I got from Kevin Delaney, editor in chief & president of Quartz.

The moment we emerged from that visit and barely out on Park Avenue, Reed told me something that I had noticed myself: This newsroom is such a textbook example of how a modern news operation should run that we can imagine many of the publishers, editors and designers we work with, coming for a one-week internship. Read more

Less time spent wading through your email? More time spent away from tech? Less selfies? More selfies? It’s almost a new year and, like with the resolutions you may be making about more exercise and less Uber riding, you may also have some work-related resolutions. I asked a handful of journalists about their tech and social media resolutions for 2015. What are yours? Email or tweet them to me and I’ll gather them into this story.

Tech resolutions

S. Mitra Kalita, executive editor (at large), Quartz: My tech resolution for 2015 is to embrace the chaos. In 2014, I read every story on getting more organized, commissioned a few myself, experimented with a few productivity apps, even went to see an email doctor to help me winnow down my inbox of 145,000 messages. Read more

S. Mitra Kalita is the executive editor of Quartz, on Poynter’s adjunct faculty, and a Spencer Fellow at Columbia University. She tweets @mitrakalita.

A friend of mine recently pondered the role of memory in journalism, saying an information overload has robbed his recall. Sometimes it feels like stories aren’t read as much as Facebooked, tweeted, toggled all day long. What actually gets absorbed, retained, understood?

This was my dilemma as Poynter asked me to compile the top 10 stories of 2014. Insecure about whether the best journalism had actually reached me, my inclination was to crowdsource the list. That felt dishonest. Key takeaway of my transition to digital media: only authenticity wins the internet.

So here are my picks, based solely on the top stories I remember from 2014. Read more

Good morning! Here are some career updates from the journalism community:

Greg Jaffe will cover the White House for The Washington Post. Previously, he covered the Pentagon there. Steve Mufson will cover the White House for The Washington Post. He covers the energy industry there. (Washington Post)

Herman Wong has joined the Washington Post’s social media team. Previously, he was on the social media team at Quartz. (Washington Post)

Peter Holley is now a reporter on the general assignment desk at The Washington Post. Previously, he was an associate editor at Houstonia magazine. (Washington Post)

Joyce MacDonald is now vice president of journalism at the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Previously, she was interim president and CEO at National Public Media.

Good morning! Here are some career updates from the journalism community:

Elise Hu will be NPR’s Asia correspondent in Seoul. She covers tech and culture at NPR. (Poynter)

Mitra Kalita is now executive editor-at-large for Quartz. Previously, she was ideas editor there. Paul Smalera will be Quartz’ new ideas editor. He is editor of The New York Times opinion app. (Poynter)

Donald Baer is now chairman of PBS’ board of directors. He is CEO of Burson-Marsteller. (PBS)

Jessica Coen is now a contributing editor at Marie Claire. She is an editor-at-large with Jezebel. (Fishbowl NY)

Stephen Lacy is now chairman of the Association of Magazine Media. He is CEO of the Meredith Corporation. (Email)

Quartz Editor-in-Chief Kevin Delaney announced Wednesday that ideas editor Mitra Kalita will become executive editor-at-large for Quartz, charged with “spearheading projects” that “build up our readership and journalism globally.”

In a memo to Quartz staff (below), Delaney noted Kalita — who was recently named an adjunct faculty member at Poynter — played a “central role” in the creation of the business vertical’s Ideas section and the launch of Quartz India.

In an interview with World News Publishing Focus, Kalita said Quartz is considering expanding to cover other subjects:

We are looking at other markets and other niches but a part of our ethos is driven by this idea that you and I have a lot in common, and might be harried by some of the same factors of life and work.

Your newsroom surely has been through the drill: an editor reaches out to some folks with an idea for a story. The cc line grows and grows as “stakeholders” chime in. By the end of the thread (or the day), you have a treatise on proposed subject.

But no story.

I thought of all those unpublished pearls today as we ran this story yesterday and promptly saw it soar to the top of our “most popular” list. As the ideas editor at Quartz, the 2-year-old global economy site of the Atlantic Media Co., it didn’t surprise me that we were pulling back the curtain and letting readers into our process and thinking. But as a reader (age 38, if you must know), the message of the transcript — that millennials are very public about their spending habits — did surprise and inform. Read more

Quartz ideas editor Mitra Kalita will join the Poynter Institute as an adjunct faculty member. Before Quartz, Kalita worked at The Wall Street Journal, and she’s also worked for the Associated Press and The Washington Post.

Mitra Kalita.

Kalita first came to Poynter when she was a college student. “A lot has changed in our profession since then and I’ve made the transition from legacy media to a digitally native, innovative startup in Quartz,” Kalita says in the release. “But a lot hasn’t; the Poynter rules I learned that summer in the late 1990s still apply.”

Full release:

ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. (October 2, 2014) –Mitra Kalita, one of the nation’s leading digital innovators and current Quartz ideas editor, is joining The Poynter Institute’s adjunct faculty.

Kalita, who was named one of Folio’s Top 100 Women in Media for 2014, is also an author, a senior manager for three startups and is a frequent lecturer on digital storytelling.